Remove aerial and phone sockets

[Soutermon]

Hi, needing help regarding removing the 2 sockets in the attached picture. They are both surplus to requirements and the cabling up the wall is an eyesore. As far as I can tell, the telephone socket is not the first in line, as I have traced the cabling outside to our living room. Can I just cut the wires and hide them in the roof and remove the sockets? Would I need to turn off power? Any help/advice is much appreciated.

20181112_123203

• Soutermon
• 13 Nov 2018

Wall sockets

 

[winston1]

No attached picture.

 

[Soutermon]

Pic attached now. Don't know why it didn't work first time!

 

[winston1]

Just make sure none of the individual wires short together when cut.

 

[OwainDIYer]

Better to disconnect the other end of the cables first.

Especially for the phone line as unused and unfiltered extension sockets (if you don't have a NTE faceplate filter) may reduce your broadband speed

 

[Soutermon]

So I decided to just go ahead and open the socket (pic below). I tested broadband speed before and after snipping the 4 cables in the pic attached, and there has been no slow down of download/upload speed. Should I be ok to just cut both cables, insulate each splice end and hide in the roof now?

 

[opps]

Yeah, you can hide them in the roof.

It might however be advisable to remove the telephone wires from the other socket further down the line.

You telephone socket has 4 wires. You only need two for the transmission of data/voice. The third wire was a legacy thing for telephone bell ringers and as such is generally no longer needed. The 4th wire, IIRC, was just a spare in case BT came out with something new that needed a 4th wire.

Part of the problem with using more than the 2 wires is that you can increase "noise" on the line which may affect your broadband. Hence my recommendation that you physically remove any wiring that is not in use.

 

[winston1]

You should also remove the aerial cable back to its origon. Unterminated RF cables will have reflections which in some cases will appear as a short circuit and kill your signal.